NaruShikaChou
by Lucillia
Summary: Otherwise known as Team Slacker.
1. The Switch

The Hokage had just gotten out of a meeting with the Academy Instructors and administrators about the possible team roster for this year's graduates. Rather than go to the tower to promptly write up a list based on the recommendations he'd received as well as what he thought would work like he usually did, he passed through the Academy grounds with a vague idea of going to see Naruto who had just gotten out of class As he silently made his way towards the knot of students that were heading out of the Academy building with the intention of heading home, he saw Naruto get pounded into the dirt by the girl who based on Academy test scores would be Naruto's future teammate if he managed to graduate this time. The boy who was also most likely to become Naruto's future teammate walked by without showing any concern for Naruto's plight.

That little scene reminded him of his own Genin team where such things had happened almost daily. He smiled fondly as he recalled his precious students before wincing as he remembered exactly what had happened to them later in life. Perhaps, teaming Naruto up with the Uchiha boy and the Haruno girl wouldn't be such a good idea...

When he got back to his office, he silently apologized to Inoichi who he knew would be disappointed, and made a small change to the tentative team roster for the graduating class. The teammates that he'd picked for Naruto were children he'd gotten on well enough with if the boy's disciplinary records were anything to judge by.

A month later, Umino Iruka stood in front of his twelve year-old students as their teacher for the last time, and called out the teams that said students would be on if they passed the second Graduation test.

"...And Team Seven will be Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Yamanaka Ino. Your sensei will be Hatake Kakashi." Iruka said as he read off the list, wondering what the Hokage was thinking with that one. Perhaps, he was trying to get the Uchiha boy to restart his clan as soon as possible, since the boy was obsessed with getting his revenge on his brother Itachi.

He got a "Yes!", a "True love prevails!", and a "Can I go home so I can hang myself?" in response to this team announcement. Deciding to ignore the last, he continued down the list.

"Team Eight will be Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, and Hyuuga Hinata. Your sensei will be Yuuhi Kurenai. Team Nine is still in circulation, and Team Ten will be Akimichi Chouji, Uzumaki Naruto, and Nara Shikamaru. Your sensei will be Sarutobi Asuma." he said, finishing the list.

The Nara boy looked startled at the final team announcement for about a second before he said "Troublesome" and laid his head back down on his desk. He understood the boy's reaction, as he too had fully expected there to be a second Ino-Shika-Cho team forming today, and had thought that with his being dead last, Naruto would have ended up on Team 7. That apparently wasn't to be however.

The rest of the day wasn't all that notable. Chouji, Shikamaru, and Naruto sat together for lunch up until Naruto had to race off to the bathroom. Asuma picked the boys up on time and informed them of the second test they had to pass, and Kakashi nearly had a nosebleed when he finally picked up his team as Sakura and Ino were both practically mauling Sasuke in their attempt to get his attention.

That night was eventful, but not for Naruto. When Yamanaka Inoichi learned that his daughter had been placed on the same team as her crush whose stated goal included the restoration of his clan, he gathered his closest friends and teammates together and they went over to the Uchiha boy's place to give him a warning that he'd never forget.


	2. You Pass!

While Sasuke, Sakura, and Ino were running around like a trio of chickens with their heads cut off trying to snatch a bell from their potential sensei's belt, Team Ten was relaxing on Training Ground 10, having already gotten that particular test out of the way. Sarutobi Asuma, having been a student of Utatane Koharu, his father's former teammate and former student of the Nidaime, was also entitled to use the bell test. Unlike Kakashi who had used it as an opportunity to torture his prospective students before failing them when they failed to meet his expectations, Asuma had set the meeting time at a reasonable hour and showed up on time.

After watching the boys get the objective of the test and band together, he had stopped the test before he was put in an embarrassing situation thanks to the rather ingenious plan his new students had come up with on the fly, and informed them that they'd passed. They were now spending a bit of time relaxing together, and getting to know each-other before Asuma headed back and informed his father that his team had passed, and looked like they would make a rather exceptional capture team in the future. As Shikamaru watched the clouds that drifted by overhead, and Chouji sat next to him chowing down on a bag of chips, his third student who was not Yamanaka Ino as he had half expected it to be up until a couple days ago, but the Yondaime's son and Jinchuriki of the Kyuubi Uzumaki Naruto instead, sat twitching with a somewhat impatient look on his face. From the looks of things, the boy was completely incapable of sitting still.

That reminded him. He would have to have a talk with the boy later about what looked to be becoming the child's signature Jutsu. While the normal Kage Bunshin Jutsu wasn't a forbidden technique and was known and sometimes used by most of the higher-level Jounin, the Taju Kage Bunshin Jutsu had been forbidden for a reason. That reason had been the fact that it was pretty much a suicide Jutsu for anyone who wasn't a Jinchuriki. There were no studies on the effects of repeated use of the Jutsu available, since for everyone besides the Uzumaki boy, there had been no repeated use of said Jutsu, which meant that he had no idea as to the potential and possibly catastrophic consequences of repeated use.

"Well, that's it for the day. I'd best be going to inform the Hokage you passed before he marks you down as a fail." Asuma said as he dusted the grass off of the back of his pants. "Meet me back here tomorrow at Nine A.M. for training and your first mission."

Naruto's head jerked up and an excited look crossed his face at the mention of the word mission, Shikamaru muttered "Troublesome", and Chouji briefly paused in his snacking. Smiling at his new students' antics, he left.

Meanwhile, on Training Ground 7:

"Here forehead, you need this more than I do." Ino said as she followed Sasuke's lead and handed her lunch over to Sakura who had been tied to the stump.

It was in that moment, that the sky darkened, thunder clouds appeared spitting out lightning, and Hatake Kakashi popped up out of nowhere with a scowl on his face. "You..." the Jounin started before shifting his expression to a sunny smile which was apparent despite the fact that a mask was covering half his face, and his hitai-ate was covering half of what was left, and saying "PASS!"

Sasuke smirked at his victory, proud of his accomplishment and the fact that he was one step closer to defeating his brother and avenging his clan. The smirk slowly vanished as the exact situation he was in began to sink in...

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Sasuke screamed when he finally realized exactly what he'd just gotten himself into.

Over on Training Ground Ten:

"Did you hear something?" Naruto asked, still twitching in place like he usually did when Kiba wasn't there to fight with when they skipped, and he couldn't pull a prank because he didn't have the materials to do so.

"You mean besides Uchiha Sasuke's cry of utter despair upon realizing that he's stuck with his two most rabid fangirls for at least a year?" Shikamaru asked. "Nope, nothing at all."

"So, you guys wanna hang out at my place?" Chouji asked as he finished his bag of barbecue flavored chips.

"Can I really?" Naruto asked.

"Since you're my teammate, I don't see why not." Chouji replied.

Naruto jumped up and shouted "YAAAAAAAY! This is the best team ever!"

"Tch, troublesome." Shikamaru muttered.


	3. Chouza's Wait

Akimichi Chouza smiled over at his wife who was anxiously waiting for their son's return, and news of whether or not he and his team had passed. She wasn't the most beautiful of women and never had been, but he wouldn't trade her for the world.

He had originally courted her slimmer and much prettier sister who, as it turned out, had only given him the time of day because she wanted the prestige of being associated with one of Konoha's premier ninja clans. Fortunately for him, that relationship sank when he had seen how cruel that woman was to her sister who later ended up becoming his wife. Choosing to walk over to his beloved and comfort her had been a decision he never regretted, especially after he'd heard about the scandal that other woman had caused when she had cheated on that poor wealthy bastard she'd netted after he'd broken up with her.

His home had been a happy one, and he'd never been given cause to doubt his wife's fidelity.

Eventually, after an eternity of waiting, his son came through the door with his teammates in tow. He could hear his son's heavy footsteps from where he and his wife were seated in the living-room followed by Shikamaru's slower and lazier tread and someone who was pattering around like a herd of cats at dinner who was presumably the Uzumaki boy. His anxious wife went over to greet the team which she was afraid might have been deliberately failed because the Uzumaki boy had been placed on it.

It appeared from the fact that the children, especially the Uzumaki boy, sounded happy that that wasn't the case. He didn't know exactly what the Hokage had been thinking when he'd set the teams. He'd fully expected there to be another Ino-Shika-Chou team this year, and it had looked as if it had been heading that way until everyone had been completely blindsided by the team selection yesterday. The choice to place Naruto on his son's team made a little bit of sense if you thought about it, considering the fact that Shikamaru and Chouji were amongst the very few children in Konoha who positively interacted with the Uzumaki boy on a regular basis, occasionally getting into trouble with him when they skipped class. But, Ino-chan, who really should have been on the team, had known his son and Shikamaru since birth and got along with them well enough.

The placing of Ino-chan on the same team as her crush and her former best friend turned rival was worrisome as well. Considering the rivalry they held for the Uchiha's affections, it was quite possible that one would push the other into doing something that couldn't be taken back in order to "win". It was quite possible that that something could result in a baby that either girl would not be ready for. He, Inoichi, and Shikaku had warned the Uchiha boy of what would happen if he did anything that might hurt the future of either of the girls, and the boy had seemed to take the lecture to heart, but with teenagers, you never knew.

When he reached the kitchen where the boys were snacking on the food that Kimiko had made in order to comfort Chouji over the potential failure of his team, the Uzumaki child was chattering away a mile a minute like a certain redhead he'd barely known but had met on a couple of particularly memorable occasions. He'd never really gotten close enough to the boy to really study him before, and had mostly seen him in the distance when he was calling Chouji in for the evening. Aside from coloring, the boy clearly took after his mother. He didn't know who the boy's father was, but if he didn't know any better he was willing to swear that...nah, it was completely ridiculous, and if it was so, Shikaku would have told him, right? Right?

"...And then I used my Oiroke Jutsu on him and he fell over and we got the bells!" the Uzumaki boy said loudly, completing the story as he happily munched on the food Kimiko had provided.

Someone would have to teach the Uzumaki boy some manners, and based on Kimiko's expression, it looked as if it would be his wife who would do it.

&!&!&!&!&

"Team 7 Pass." Kakashi said upon entering the Hokage's office.

He had seriously considered not passing the team, his debt to Obito be damned. The three of them completely lacked teamwork, and the Uchiha boy was an arrogant prick. However, he didn't want to be raked over hot coals by Inoichi for failing his precious daughter, and the village as a whole for failing the Uchiha who was supposed to bring back the prestige the village had lost after the Massacre. Life would be easier for him if he just passed the brats, that and he would be able to get his revenge on two of them without anyone interfering now that they were his students.

He was originally supposed to have Naruto on his team instead of Ino. What had happened, as the Hokage had explained when he'd gotten his team assignment and Naruto's name wasn't on it, was that the Hokage had seen Naruto being mistreated by the Uchiha boy and the Haruno girl, and had decided to place him on a team that he would be able to actually work with without being the team punching bag. Since the change had been practically spur of the moment, the Hokage had thought that leaving it at just that change would be best rather than causing a great deal of last minute chaos as paperwork was refiled in order to re-order the senseis of the teams. Up until the last minute, the rosters for the teams were mutable when it came to students due to the possibility of last second drop-outs and injuries that might prevent a student from joining his or her team, or the sudden declaration of a blood feud between clans who each had a child who would have been on the same team as a child from the other clan. The teacher selection was almost always made at the beginning of the final year, and most of the paperwork was filled out in advance with just a few blanks where the student names and numbers went.

Thanks to the Uchiha boy and the Haruno girl, he wasn't going to be Naruto's sensei like he had promised Minato-sensei before he died. He would be taking that out of their little hides over the coming years.

"Good." the Hokage said in response to his statement when he entered the office, as he marked Team 7 down in the Pass column in which Team 10 which held the boy he was supposed to be teaching was already marked. "I've received reports that Uchiha Sasuke has been showing more emotion over the last two days than he has in the last year. Perhaps this team is exactly what the boy needs to draw him out of his shell."

"Either that or drive him insane." he muttered as he left the Hokage's office, remembering the look of dawning horror on the boy's face and the wail of utter despair when he had realized that the team had passed and he was stuck with a pair of girls who were reportedly his most rabid fangirls.


End file.
